By the age of 30, Lisa Davis had spent half her life as a sex worker. When staff from Elmore Community Services, a 20-year-old complex-needs support charity, met her on the streets of Oxford, she was sleeping rough, addicted to heroin and crack, and suffering from untreated epilepsy. The local authority had just identified her for an Acceptable Behaviour Contract (ABC) for soliciting.

Elmore's Antisocial Behaviour (ASB) Team built up a relationship of trust with Davis. With an intensive 40 hours of support from the team over 11 months, she kicked the drugs, received medication for her epilepsy, moved into a council flat and stopped sex work. Today, she is a trained mentor for other drug users and lives in a council flat in Nottingham where she feels part of the local community.

Elmore launched its ASB team three years ago with a remit to support hard-to-reach people like Davis, with entrenched needs such as enduring mental health and substance misuse problems or those at risk of homelessness. The aim is to tackle the underlying cause of incidents like aggressive begging, street drinking or soliciting, rather than simply target the behaviour itself. The team helps people recognise and manage behaviour, offers practical coping strategies and increases use of mainstream services. The team has so far worked with 53 clients and since 2007 the number of anti-social behaviour orders issued in Oxford has dropped by 60% and ABCs by 77%.

"Our clients are perpetrator and victim at same time," explains Elmore director Kate Cocker. "You look at all the needs, all elements of their life, but also address their anti-social behaviour – how do their needs cause the behaviour?"

The success is partly thanks to a groundbreaking partnership with Oxford police and the city council's Crime and Nuisance Action Team. The ASB Team even shares the council team's office for half the week. Anecdotally, says Cocker, there has been a shift in the approach of statutory agencies from a focus only on enforcement to one that includes long-term outcomes.

The £112,000 annual cost of the two full-time support workers and a part-time team leader is funded by a charitable trust with additional money from the local authority and primary care trust. The work offers a potential saving to the public sector as it costs an average of £3,450 for the service to support a client for 12 months and create sustainable turnaround in behaviour, but around £40,000 to keep someone in prison for the same period.

Before meeting the ASB team, clients are often known to social services or police, but do not engage with statutory services because they are either not willing or because they slip through the net thanks to their range of problems or the inability of services to respond flexibly.

A referral from a statutory authority or a self-referral to the ASB team leads to a basic needs assessment, which can be carried out anywhere from a park bench to a hostel, a hospital ward or a supermarket cafe. As Cocker says, the service offers support to the hard-to-reach "where they want, when they want it, how they want it".

Staff draw up a support package that encourages clients to recognise and manage their behaviour, and understand its impact on others as well as the consequences of breaking enforcement measures. Support lasts until the anti-social behaviour has significantly reduced and can include attending case conferences, help with registering with a GP or signposting to other health services. Clients are also helped through the legal process as the team advocates on their behalf in court or in custody.

"Anti-social behaviour is about identifying perpetrators," says Cocker. "But for us it's about making sure the vulnerability of these people is known and taken into consideration; we're tackling the root cause of their behaviour – not just the symptoms."

Some names have been changed

SPONSOR: National Mental Health Development Unit

WINNER: Elmore Community Services for its Anti Social Behaviour Support Service, which aims to reduce anti-social behaviour caused by people with complex needs

RUNNERS-UP:

Cool2Care for screening and training care workers who they then place directly with families of disabled children, which boosts flexibility and control

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS trust for its Working Age Dementia Service for individuals below the age of 65 with a suspected or confirmed diagnosis of dementia